


Reading

by Fishykarp



Category: Sleepless Domain (Webcomic)
Genre: A lot of Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Undine isn't ok
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:08:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26712700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fishykarp/pseuds/Fishykarp
Summary: "...Kokoro, I know more than I ever wanted to about the statistics for these things. Girls who go missing overnight don't tend to turn up fine."- Undine Wells
Kudos: 18





	Reading

Undine sits alone in the school library. Normally she'd be hanging out with Sally or Gwen or Sylvia or Tessa after school. She scoffs under her breath.

That night replays in her head. The night her friends died - no - the night that her friends were murdered. That purple girl. It had to be her. She had to have something to do with it.

She eyes a bookshelf near the back of the library, placed between all the boring non-fiction books that nobody ever reads. The placement was made to be intentionally uninteresting. It's one of those things everyone knows, but nobody really wants to think about.

Death statistics. Records of all the girls who've disappeared or died on duty. Maybe her friends weren't the first ones to be killed by a purple ghostly girl.

She makes her way to the bookshelf. It's full, not a single book checked out. She scans the shelves. There must be at least _one_ listing all individual deaths, _right_?

No. There isn't one. 

There's _ten_. 

On the spines of the book, years were listed. CE 121-130. CE 131-140. Each one of these large encyclopaedic volumes, she realises, is ten years of Magical Girls who fought and died for the ones they loved. Ten years of names. Ten years of lives loved and lost. Ten times over.

No point dwelling. She takes out the most recent volume, published two years ago with the welcoming of the new decade. It'll be eight years until the next one. When... when her friends will join all these other girls in these unread tomes. Just three more names among hundreds.

She returns to her seat, book in hand. Opening it up, she begins to read.

Minutes pass.

Hours.

Nothing.

In all her searching, she finds nothing. Each girl's death described in as much respectful detail as possible, and yet not a single mention of any monstrous purple girl.

She should've known it wouldn't be that easy.

She should stop. She didn't get what she came for, and certainly if the most-recent, probably most well-researched volume had no mention of the girl, it'd be fruitless to waste any more time.

Still, something bothers her.

The book had one Magical Girl to a page. Names, powers, circumstances of death. Whoever wrote this put a lot of love into making sure that as much was remembered about these girls as possible. Writing as much about their deaths as they could in good taste, so that future Magical Girls may avoid their fates.

Which is why it was all the more sobering every time she read "Missing. (Presumed dead)"

That can't be right, right? So many Magical Girls disappearing without a trace? Magical Girls who had teams and disappeared right under their noses? Entire groups vanishing in a single night?

She'd read a few cases of monsters killing in a way where no body was left behind. But only a handful, and even then some trace of the girl would eventually be found.

So what happened to all those girls?

She returns to the bookshelf. She shouldn't, but she does. It isn't like she has anyone waiting on her tonight. She looks for anything that might give some hint as to what happened to all those missing girls. 

There isn't much. Numbers, a few years out of date but seemingly accurate. They're high. Too high. 

She searches newspaper articles. As one of the oldest institutions in the city, the Future's Promise library is much larger and grander than most local ones, and one of the few that collect city newspapers for preservation. 

Undine searches the collections, scanning for stories of missing Magical Girls. As much as they avoid considering the possibility of Magical Girl death, this many missing magical girls wouldn't be something that the news could ignore, or so she hopes.

And she's right. She finds what she's looking for. And it isn't long until she wishes she hadn't.

Most deaths, especially those of girls without much in the way of fame, weren't given much attention. Perhaps a page or so praising their heroism, in that same idolising dehumanising way that Undine was all too used to. Distancing. It wasn't anything new.

But one can only distance themselves so much. It's harder to ignore a life that could still be saved.

Occasionally, in what would likely be months or years apart in real time but disturbingly common with the editions lined end-to-end, there would appear a notice on the top of the front page.

**Emergency Notice. Magical Girl ___________ has been reported missing. Please contact your local government office if you have any information relating to her location.**

A desperate call into the wind for any trace of the missing girl. A rallying evident in updates in the following editions. A city coming together for its heroes to save the ones who risk everything to save them.

For a moment, Undine's heart is warmed. And then she reads on.

Most of the girls _are_ found, eventually. Either as bodies found decaying in some river or alley, or identified posthumously after being mutilated beyond recognition by a monster they gave their lives to defeat. More trails still ran cold completely, the papers simply stopping giving updates on the situation as they ran out of updates to _give_. Girls whose fates were never known, but given obituaries on their heroism nonetheless.

Girls that were found _alive_? Few and far between, mostly based on miscommunications and misunderstandings. Not non-existent, but drowned out by the sheer weight of all these stories that'd never get an ending.

Undine looks up from the papers. She's read enough. She's read too much, some logical part of her mind tells her. All this time spent, and she's ended up with more questions than she'd had already. 

Maybe that's why she spent so much time trying to find answers. Wanting to find something unknown that she could learn to understand in a world that no longer made sense. Wanting to hold onto the idea that every question had some neat and tidy answer. Because if an entire city couldn't find out what happened to these girls, how could _she_ find out what really happened to her friends? 

No. She shouldn't think like that. She isn't embarking on a journey without a map. She's fighting an enemy that she's _seen_. An enemy that's already come back to taunt her once. 

She remembers the conversation she had with Kokoro at lunch. She remembers what Tessa said after school. Maybe she is allowed to be ok. Maybe she doesn't have to be alone.

Yes. With a team behind her, and friends by her side, she has a chance. And she won't stop until that girl, or whatever she is, is stopped from hurting anyone else. 

Still, the idea of losing someone and never knowing what happened to them. It's frightening.

She hopes it's something she'll never have to live through herself.

Hasn't the world taken enough from her already?

**Author's Note:**

> Wow! I did not intend on making this a full fic, but here we are!
> 
> This fic was originally a short drabble I wrote as part of a discussion on the most recent page on the discord (linked below), Chapter 16 Page 17. Then I expanded it to this, and i'm not entirely sure why. It probably drags on a bit at the end, but that's neither here nor there.
> 
> Sleepless Domain Fans Discord: https://discord.gg/3HsdCvM


End file.
